Palo Alto Day 39, Feb. 23, 2012

Teeny Weeny Crescent Waxing Moon
Pichetti

All were here accept Laurie who is now quite ill with this roaming and very tenacious cough and cold.  And,It was so good to have all the children together on this day.  I had different plans for the day but when Bodie came he asked if we could go back to Pichetti to see if his favorite shirt that he lost that day could be looked for. Well, there was no reason why not so, I altered a few things and that was where we went.  Of course there were no objections from the children to go to this most loved place.

For circle I introduced a story about some ways to tend to scarey feelings.  It was about a Dragon whose original job was to take care of the people.  The Dragon was born to protect and guard the people from those things that they are scared of and, the gift back to the Dragon, eating all those scarey things.  They are like desert to them.  Today the children heard the story and then they got to draw their own fears and then give it away to a real cauldron. We then burned them with fire like the Dragon’s fire.
When they got to their mats in the morning it had a board with some papers attached to it. After the story they got to pass around a crayon buckett, take what they needed and then draw the scarey things.  We then wrote down what they said on their pictures.   Some even drew pictures of what made them so very happy. We then shared their fears one with the other and one by one did our burning  as a gift to the Dragon.  There was talk about other ways to take care of the things that you are afraid of and the children just LOVED this journey.  We then poured water into the Cauldron and when all was burned they made their traditional “soup.”

When we got to Pichetti they were all excited to help Bodie find his shirt and, WE DID!!!!!  We were walking along the path and there it was!!  This was just so wonderful to find and all were happy and celebratory.  We then went to the pond and began to play there.  There was a great deal of exploration and play with Oak gauls, dirt, bugs, wood, climbing logs and again like Tuesday, such involvement with the surroundings and each other.  There was a light heart all around and, Paul, who came with his tennis shoes today, was running ALL OVER with great speed.   Bodie, even though he didn’t have his running shoes on was still just as fast as before and the rest, just delightfully running, sitting, eating, exploring……

For a half hour we all were in the Sun across the pond near a structure of tree branches.  Giulio was more of the instigator of this next event which was me telling a lot of stories!! Giulio just kept saying, “tell another one, tell another one.”  He has been like Spring itself, open, animated, blossoming into more of his glorious self.  After I told these many stories Audrey reminded me that we wanted to go a little early to collect olives at Eleanor Pardee in order to use as dye for our rattles. She then presented it to the group if they wanted to go a little early or not. It was unanimous that we all head on so we packed up, went back, got on the bus and off we went to gather those Olives. When we got there that is actually what we did within the time frame expected.
We had our closing circle there and it was just another sweet day.